Co-ed tri

I've now completed my first triathlon with dudes. And I have to say, no disrespect to the dudes, but they were not as nice as the women have been. They liked to say things like, "Anyone's slowing me down, I'll just swim over them!" As if this were an Olympic qualifying event and not a very small town community race to benefit a freaking scouting troop. Like, a little sportsmanship would be nice. Only one dude passed me in the pool, so there.

I liked the swim best as usual. The biking was kind of a drudgery. I just think I really need a faster bike. My friend's husband said, "It's part bike, but it's part motor!" Meaning that I need to motor more. Which I'm sure I do. But you can only motor so mightily on a bike that weighs one thousand pounds when competing against bikes that I could hold over my head with my pinky finger. I'm just sayin'. I love my bike and I love what it's done for me this year in the grand scheme of things, but it's just so plodding. I really might invest in a faster one. I need to think about it. The run was fine. I was pooped and slow, but I never had to stop to walk, a first for me in a tri. We ate some jambalaya and hit the road pretty quickly as we were late for a pool party due to the race's late start in a fog delay. Fascinating, I know! Anyway.

Here's what the dudes did that the women never do -- hello, sweeping generalization that's totally true! (1) They failed to call out when passing on bikes on the left. Sorry, but it is just discourteous not to. (2) They wore really tight clothes that showed off all their business. I understand that women do not have the same business to show off but it was really quite overwhelming and distracting to be surrounded by all of those bulges. I'm sorry! I am sorry. But it's true. I think I'm just a better women-only racer. I love men and am not trying to rag on them, but there was such a different vibe on the entire course with the testosterone pulsating all over the place.

Anyway -- overall, it was a good time, and I was particularly delighted in the photo above to be approaching the finish line. The inevitable post-tri slump has set in this week, and other than a rousing night of singing along with my brothers in a martini bar, a fun backyard visit with my faux nieces and the pups, the rental of Adventureland, and a nice Italian lunch on a patio, this has not been the world's most wondrous week. But a holiday weekend looms ahead, and that is always a good thing.

Triathlon report

The fourth and final triathlon of the series was not a triathlon after all. More on that in a bit.

After a long day of visiting with family and traveling to New Orleans, I was sound asleep by 10 the night before the triathlon, only to be awakened by the boys next-door having an impromptu patio concert a little past midnight. Ah, college boys and their guitars. I was able to get back to sleep, out of which I was jolted by the strummy strummy ringtone of the 3:30 cell phone alarm. Somehow I was alert enough to make a peanut butter sandwich and get all of my things together. My friends picked me up at 4:30, and we hit the road in the darkness, listening to an excellent mix CD with songs like "Fergalicious" and "Bootylicious" and trying to put together coherent sentences for conversation.

The setting for the event was very woodsy. So woodsy that when we stepped out of the car two hours later, the mosquitoes immediately attacked. I'm not sure what it is with me and bug bites before a race, but there you go. I sprayed on a bunch of sunscreen to try to kill the itchy, burning sensation overtaking my skin. As we unloaded our bags and made our way to the transition area to set up and pick up our packets and what have you, it was announced that the swimming leg of the triathlon had been canceled because a boater had gone missing the night before in another part of the lake. We all just kind of stood there kind of dumbsquizzled, not sure what to do, wearing our swimsuits and flip flops and holding goggles in one hand and swim caps in another. Of course we were sad about the boater but sort of also regrouping as we shifted our focus as to how the event would now go. Flip flops were exchanged for sneakers as they switched the swim to a run, and I changed out of my swimsuit into my very stylish biking/running ensemble, and our transition spots were rearranged to accommodate the fact that we no longer needed to dry off or put on shoes after swimming, and so forth.

We set out for the run, and I deliberately took it pretty easy. The fact that I finished two miles in 19 minutes goes to show me that it was not a full two miles, as that pace is physically impossible for me even at a full sprint, which I most certainly was not doing. But fine by me. Because the bike route -- sweet heavens above. It was super hilly. Way hillier than anything I have ever done before. The first one appeared out of nowhere and might as well have been Mt. Kilimanjaro for how intimidated I was by it. My mouth dropped open and I said aloud, "You have GOT to be kidding me." I tried to shift gears to make it easier to pedal, but that just made me feel like I wasn't getting anywhere. This happened hill after hill after hill. One of them was an overpass over the interstate, which was kind of scary in addition to being impossible to climb, and I felt really sorry for anyone who might have a fear of heights. The best part of the bike ride was a little patch of road where the trees branched out over it, almost completely shading it except for little bursts of sunlight. It was so pretty, honestly, that I almost forgot how pissed off I was and how much I was hating life. The hills were so tough that I went to a really dark place in the last mile or so of the biking, the depth to which I had not sunk since some of my longer training runs (10 miles, 11 miles) during half-marathon training in 2007, during which I felt like I might black out due to the force with which I hated the sport and the entire universe with my entire being. That is how I started to feel on this bike ride. My knees began to ache. I started getting very slow and wobbly. I started worrying about running out of gatorade. I was miserable. I have no idea how long it took me to finish the 15 miles. Dear Lord, just get me off this bike, I will run a thousand miles. Luckily I only had to run two. Which were fine, especially when volunteers poured cups of water all over my head, soaking my shirt to the gills.

A note on the hills: I couldn't decide once it was all said and done if I would have preferred to know in advance about the hills. What would have been the point, except to mentally prepare? It's not like there are a bunch of hills around here that I could train on. It just kind of seems like the race website would have said something about it so people who weren't ready for them could make a fair evaluation of whether or not to sign up. One of my friends wasn't confident on her brand new bike with going downhill, which was pretty steep at times, so she got off her bike and ran it on all the downhills, which was kind of a crazy experience, I'm sure. Oh, well. What's done is done and we all survived.

Once we were done, we stood around hydrating and stretching and eating some nice homemade post-race food (perk of a fairly small event) like brownies and gingerbread and cinnamon rolls (healthy!) ... the race runner announced some time later that the last racer was on her way in, and so we all gathered around to cheer for her as she crossed the finish line and got the medal around her neck. She was 60-something and fought hard to finish. It was awesome.

It was a fun road trip and a very hot and exhausting but good race day under the circumstances. I would have liked to do the open water swim instead of two runs, but I understand that the right call was made on that. I thought this might be it for me as far as triathlons go for the year, but this morning I woke up and signed up for another one in a few weeks. They're just fun, and I'm not ready to be done yet.

Triathlon report

About 2 months ago, I did the swimming leg (350 meters) of a triathlon relay team and was hooked. About four weeks later, I did another triathlon, the whole thing that time, all three legs (250 meter swim, 10 mile bike, 2 mile run). I'd only had a bike for about a week and a half. I just kind of threw myself into the whole thing. Luckily, I was able to kind of phase myself in by starting with a relay and then with a triathlon with relatively short distances.

About four more weeks went by, and it was time for the latest event (350 meter swim, 12 mile bike, 2 mile run). While not following any specific training schedule, I tried to either swim, bike, or run almost every day. This has been surprisingly enjoyable.

And now to recap the day!

I set my alarm for 5, but Zuko helpfully woke me up long before that. I ate a piece of toast with peanut butter on it and just kind of lolled around. Eventually I got dressed and loaded my bike onto my cursed trunk rack and headed out to the site. It was still dusk, and there was already a long line for chips. I set up my transition area and headed to the line, where I stood in the wet grass with Tevas on my feet, which were immediately swarmed with fire ants. The welts started swelling immediately, as they do, and I told myself not to scratch them and that I would be worried about far worse soon enough. Not the greatest start to the experience, but whatever! Be tough, I told myself, over and over and over. I got my chip and my number written on my arms and legs with a big black marker by a volunteer, and eventually it was time to line up by the pool.

I learned during the last two triathlons that it is dumb to put your cap and goggles on until right before you get into the pool because it's a very long wait and those things are tight. I self-seeded myself with the 8:30 swimmers and waited and waited and waited. People, this is possibly the least fun part of the day. It's exciting to huddle there, sort of, in your suits as the super fast swimmers begin, but eventually it just gets boring. I stood on the bleachers to watch for a little while and finally it was my turn to hop in. There was no dilly-dallying, as you step on the mat to activate your chip and plunge right in. I found myself passing folks fairly easily which made me feel strong. I knew that the swimming leg would be my best and that I like swimming more than the other two events so I vowed to enjoy it. And I did! I didn't even hesitate to pass people out of fear of being rude or whatever, which I was a little more worried about my first two times around. I did have to switch to breast stroke at some point because I got very tuckered out doing freestyle, but luckily that was my best stroke as a child and there are some things the body just doesn't forget. So I finished and slipped on the little ladder on the way out but the volunteer dudes just grabbed my arms and hauled me out, at which point I tore off my goggles so I could see and my swim cap so my brain could breathe again and took off in bare feet for transition. The volunteers were super cheery, as usual, which helps. (I did the swim in 7:43, an improvement of about 2 minutes over my time in my first triathlon 2 months ago, which is exciting for me! I think if I really worked on sprinting during training instead of just swimming at a semi-leisurely and steady pace I could improve even more.)

T1 (or Transition 1, the time between swimming and biking) is typically the longest, and I ended up taking almost 3 minutes to semi-dry my feet off with a grass-covered towel, put my shoes and socks on, get very tangled up in my shirt as I tried to pull it over a still very wet top half of me, put my helmet on, and grab my wee packet of goo and shove it in my cleavage, a tip I learned from a fellow racer at our pre-race pasta dinner the previous evening (my only experience with goo was during the half-marathon, and I felt it definitely helped me through those last couple of miles), run my bike to the mounting line, hop on, and go.

(Sidebar: the weekend before the race, I went with a group of fellow racers on a practice ride on the race route, where I'd never ridden before. It was way more difficult than my other rides for these reasons: (1) way more windy (2) no shade (3) super fast cars and trucks whizzing by in a terrifying manner and (4) no stopping or slowing down for curves, thus nonstop pedaling the entire time. It took me a solid 60 minutes to finish the training ride, and I was not exactly tickled pink about doing it all over again during the triathlon.)

So the biking leg began, and it wasn't awful. I took comfort in the fact that I'd actually bought a little bag with a spare tube, tools, air can, etc. and attached it to my seat in case I got a flat – there would be volunteers to assist with such things, but only if you had your own gear and tools for it. I knew I would feel like a major chump if I got a flat but had nothing to change it with. So this eased my mind. A few bikes broke down not long into the route, and all I felt I could do was holler "you all right?" and if the answer was affirmative, keep going. What in the hell was I going to do to help, seriously? There were scores of volunteers, and reports after the race indicated they'd been able to help. One biker on a sensational road bike had to pull over because she dropped her water bottle, previously one of my great fears. Not that I was glad to see these difficulties, but it did make feel like less of a spaz, you know? So I rode and rode and rode and reached the dreaded 180-degree turn around point, at which I slowed to a near stop all the while yelling to the traffic building up at my rear, "Sorry people behind me, sorry people behind me, sorry people behind me!" It didn't take me all that long in actuality, but in my mind I was holding up the entire race. But made it through that, phew. Then I ran over the dead coil of a rather giant snake, which was both (1) bumpy and (2) kind of gross! Sometimes I would find myself starting to daydream and not pedaling as fast as I could, and I'd say, "Self, this ain't a joyride, this is a race!" I said this to myself many, many times. At 10 miles, I squirted some delicious, snotty goo into my mouth and told myself it was a melted caramel. Somehow this made it more palatable. It got all over my hand so I just started licking my filthy hand. It made me feel kind of nasty and tough, but in a good way! Finally it was 12 miles …a quick glance at my watch showed me I'd done it about six minutes faster than I had in my training ride, which thrilled me to no end, frankly, even though it's by no means a "fast" time. Time to dismount. Holy hell!

(Sidebar word to the wise: If you are training for a triathlon, please try to get in some workouts where you run after biking. This has been the most difficult part of the races for me by far. Even if you don't have to run very far, there is something strange that happens to your legs after you dismount your bike, and that something is that they stop working. At least momentarily. I let out a very loud "JESUS," when I hopped off my bike to run it into the transition area. I heard laughter from the crowd of volunteers – not a mean-spirited laughter, but a supportive laughter of those who knew all too well what I was feeling. It is very uncomfortable and unpleasant. The only times I have ever run after biking are the two triathlons I've done, and that is just kind of stupid of me. Getting out the gate on the run faster and better would have improved my not only my run time but my run experience, so I am going to have to really plug this practice if you are training.)

T2 was under a minute because all you have to do is get your bike to the rack and rip your helmet off and make your way to the running starting point … it would have been faster had my legs been fully functional, but whatever!

I took a cup of water and a cup of power ade immediately upon setting out on the run, which I think was a mistake, because I immediately got a raging side cramp. I started jogging slowly but it was so painful that I had to walk for probably a ½-mile. Bummer, but oh well. You can only do what you can do … there are some pains that you can push through and some you can't. I walked as fast as I could and the cramp subsided somewhat but not all the way. I decided to just jog anyway and that it was a bearable pain at this point. About one mile in, I saw a dear old childhood friend who was volunteering with his young son, and instead of handing me an ice-cold sponge, he basically showered me with a handful of them, which was AWESOME and felt better than pretty much anything has ever felt in my life. Thanks, childhood friend!

This revitalized me and I felt pretty strong, if slow, for the rest of the run. Eventually I caught up to one of my racing pals and we ran the last quarter mile or so in together, which was nice. She gave me a sip of her power ade. "I've said 'f*ck' like a hundred times," she said. "I might vomit, I mean it, " I said. I praised her for doing this while breastfeeding. We panted along and finished strong. My running time was not stellar (two 12-minute miles), but I still feel good about it because basically I refuse to feel bad about anything at all!

I hoped I would finish in 1:30, but honestly I considered this an unreachable goal knowing how slowly I would probably run, but I swam and biked a little faster than I thought I would, so I finished in 1:29:53! I saw 1:30:00 on my watch as I stopped for them to take my chip off after crossing the finish line and knew I'd made it under my goal time. I felt fantastic as they slipped the medal around my neck and promptly dumped a bottle of water over my head, an action I would repeat more than once in the next hour and a half or so that we stood around baking in the sun watching the awards ceremony and waiting for a raffle drawing for a new road bike. It was majorly, majorly hot, I cannot lie. But that was okay, because we were tough beyotches!

Here's what I have loved about these triathlons so far. Since they have all been all-women triathlons, some of what I have loved has been women-specific. Okay, here goes, and I've said some of this before so bear with me if I'm repeating myself. It is so awesome to be surrounded by hundreds of women from their early teens to their late sixties at every possible level of athleticism imaginable who are there to achieve whatever their goals are. I love seeing the beautiful bodies of every possible shape and size and fitness level. I love that so many dozens of people come out to volunteer to make it all run smoothly and hand out drinks and sponges and keep cars from running us over and show us which way to turn and tell us we are looking good and that we are almost done and that we will make it. To me, that is just a fundamentally kind thing to do, and I would like to volunteer at some point.

The thing about the word "triathlete" is that it contains the word "athlete." I have never been an athlete, and I still have a hard time thinking of myself this way. Surely no one that knows me would ever apply this word to me. I am many things, maybe, but not "athletic." But with every event, I am starting to be able to feel it a little bit more. This has been really good for me this spring and summer. It has felt like just what I needed.

We've got our fourth and final triathlon of the series in a few weeks a few hours away … this one has a little longer distances in every leg, and there's an open water swim in a lake. To get there, we have to wake up and leave literally in the middle of the night. We will get filthy and be delirious, and I honestly cannot wait.

Triathlon report

Not sure my fingers have the energy to type this post, but I am willing them to. Last night my friend and I drove about 2.5 hours away to spend the night before our triathlon this morning. (Designed mostly for beginners, it was a 250m swim, 10mi bike ride, and 2mi run.) Even though we got rather lost, heading to Texas instead of the central part of the state by accident, we had an enjoyable road trip. We have basically exactly the same taste in music, so we sang until our voices hurt. We calmed ourselves in the frenzy of getting lost by listening to Hairspray. It's just soothing. "He's Corny!" Anyway, we went out for pasta and French bread in the attempt to carb it up bigtime and turned in at about 10:30. BBQ shrimp pasta is very good. So is The Wednesday Wars, which I didn't want to stop reading, but we decided it was best to turn out the lights for our 6 a.m. wake-up call. At about 1 a.m., the peaceful sound of the waterfall on my noise machine turned inexplicably to morning birdsong, which of course woke up up instantly. "WHAT THE ___?" I moaned, cursing and slapping the buttons until the waterfall came back. Somehow my friend slept through this, luckily.

We were up and out the door by 6:15 to head to our destination. We picked up our packets and got our numbers drawn on our arms and legs with big black markers and set up our bikes. Since I only did the swimming leg last time, the whole set up was new to me. I didn't even know how to hook the bike onto the little rack. Great. But I lay out my towel and shoes and helmet and all that jazz and soon it was time to head to the pool area. The 250 meter swim meant up and back in five lanes. We predicted this would cause major traffic jams -- swimming counter-intuitively on the left and passing on the right, where someone would inevitably be coming at you because she was swimming on her left -- if it sounds confusing, it was, but luckily no one had to pass me, and I was able to pass a couple of people by ending up at the wall at the same time and having them graciously tell me to go ahead. So I really enjoyed the swim other than the fact that I could feel the velcro on my ankle bracelet chip loosening with every kick and I think it caused me to kick a little less ferociously than I would have otherwise.

I lost a little time getting out of the pool because I'd left my Tevas near the pool steps. Many people left their sandals or flip-flops there because the asphalt in the parking lot where the bikes were was really really rocky and hurt to walk on gingerly -- I was afraid it would tear my feet up if hauling ass across it. I never go barefoot, even in my own home, so my feet are not exactly toughened up. Anyway, that took me a second, as did changing into padded biking shorts once I got to the transition area, but I know my nether regions, and there was no way they could survive the bike ride without padding. I pulled my bike down and realized I'd forgotten to put my shirt on, but when I reached down the bike started falling over, so I just left my shirt on the ground -- remembering that the race leader guy had said we only needed to wear our numbers for the run, not the ride -- and rode in my swimsuit and biking shorts. I "ran" with my bike to the mounting area and wobbled my way on, apologizing to the volunteers, "It's my first time." They were very encouraging.

I proceeded to set out on the ten mile ride and fry somewhat like bacon, but that's okay. I was passed time and again by other bikers -- my friend finished the swim after me but passed me handily on the bike -- but I never passed anyone, no shock there. I pedaled as fast as I could, but I am still a beginner and there is only so fast my bike can go, especially compared to some of the road bikes whizzing past me every two seconds as if they had wings. Next time I will bring sunglasses because I squinted the entire time. I tried to sing to myself and enjoy the scenery. Truly, it was so pastoral I felt as if I were in a watercolor painting or something. There were horses behind fences. "Hi, horses!" I called, flashing back to when my dad was teaching me how to drive on River Road and he yelled at me for getting distracted by the cows on the levee. What can I say, I find large grazing farm animals a pleasure to behold. There were silos and red barns. Sprawling farmhouses with front porches and corn fields, which of course made me start thinking about The Omnivore's Dilemma. The course was luckily totally flat. I only ended up in the wrong lane once on a turn. It was strange to try to give myself pep talks. Usually, such as in the half-marathon, I would just say to myself over and over, "You can do this, it's what you've been training for!" This time, I just said, "You can do this, it's what you've ... not trained for at all. But that's okay, you can still do it!"

Some 45+ minutes (?) later, it was time to dismount and "run" the bike back to the transition area. My legs were total noodles by this point and I seriously thought I was going to fall over. I took my time pulling off the biking shorts and pulling on running shorts (way too much changing compared to other people but I just wanted to be comfortable and not feel like I was running in a diaper) and making sure to put my damn shirt on and grab a visor because it was really sunny and there was not a tree in sight. I took off and saw that many, many people had already finished the entire triathlon. I told myself it was only two miles. Unfortunately it was two miles on legs I could no longer feel with sizzling skin on black pavement roads. Holy crap. I didn't make it very far on the run before I had to start speed walking and calm down a little bit. I ran a little more, I walked a little more. I saw my friend up ahead of me and as a volunteer cheered me on, "Lookin' good!" (doubtful), I said to her, "I am going to catch my friend" (pant pant) "if it kills me!" "You go get her," she yelled. So I took off (and by that I mean I broke into a slow jog instead of walking) and eventually caught up to her. I didn't feel bad about having walked because a lot of people were walking. A lot. And a lot of them looked really fit. It was just ... really hot. People were really hot, it was obvious. Thank goodness for the volunteer cheerleaders -- they really did help so much. I ran through to the end and promptly dumped a bottle of cold water over my head because I was so hot I felt like I might burst into flames. My friend came through shortly thereafter and our final times ended up being within less than a minute of each other. (I was a faster swimmer, she was a faster biker, and we ran probably around the same. So it was all good.)

We got our medals and stretched and ate some jambalaya and headed home, but not before stopping on our way out of town at the DQ. I wanted a banana pudding blizzard probably more than I've ever wanted anything in my life. I hadn't been to the DQ since the summer of '95 in Boulder, when I ate a blizzard every day and I'm not joking. If you see pictures of me from that summer, this will come as no surprise. I hadn't even been to a DQ since I first saw Waiting for Guffman. So it had an even deeper meaning. We enjoyed our blizzards. Every bite of vanilla wafers and bananas and ice cream tasted like Libby Mae Brown singing Teacher's Pet and like that beautiful Colorado summer.

So. That was that. My sister reminded me that she's always thought I should be a triathlete. She has said this over the years but I effectively ignored her because it seemed impossible to contemplate. Now as of today I actually am. I still can't really believe it.

One of my favorite parts of one of my favorite books, Taking Care of Terrific by Lois Lowry (who has an excellent blog), is when Cynthia looks back on organizing the bag lady root beer popsicle protest and reflects upon how good it feels to win a war, thinking it might be fun to start another one.

In that spirit, I feel like I must now look for another war. So I've registered for a slightly longer triathlon in August (350m swim, 12mi bike, and 2mi run) and am considering an even longer triathlon (500m swim, 15mi bike, 5k run) where I'd have to swim in a lake. Reports are that you come out of the lake totally brown and covered in goo. If that's not immersion therapy for a germophobe, I don't know what is. I feel good about this. I think that Cynthia, Hawk, Seth Sandroff, and Tom Terrific would be proud.

Catching Up

Before it gets away from me, I want to get a little down about a wonderful weekend. I've already posted about the concerts, which were both amazing, but I want to record what else went on. It was a rare weekend when the whole family was in town -- my sister and her husband (they live out of state) and my brother and his new girlfriend (they travel a lot). My sister had the inspired idea to rent out a private karaoke room at a Thai restaurant in an early celebration of my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. We thought about inviting other people, but in the end, it was just us, and we had what can only be called a blast. There was dancing, there was drinking, there was so much eating, and there was plenty of singing. One of my favorite parts was watching my mother watch my brothers sing together. Their harmonies were admittedly beautiful but she was just blown away. Many pictures were taken, some of which I will eventually get around to posting. We also went to one of my brother's gigs, had boiled crawfish, had beignets and cafe au lait, and just had a merry time. I loved having everyone here. Just sitting around eating my mom's crawfish etouffee or lying around on the bed with my sister and brother-in-law were delightful. It was a really wonderful weekend and one I will not soon forget.

Randomness: The Great Performances special In the Heights: Chasing Broadway Dreams is excellent, even if you are not familiar with the show. Definitely worth checking out.

Meanwhile. I am still watching season two of Chuck and loving it a lot and am thrilled it has been renewed. I am reading The Wednesday Wars, finally, and loving it.

I got from Netflix the DVD of the Rent: Live on Broadway special that my brother and I went to see last fall. The special features are indeed quite special. I highly recommend both the live stage show itself as well all of the featurettes, which are VERY WONDERFUL. Seeing Jonathan Larson's parents and sister, all kinds of backstage goodness, the longtime crew members, the closing cast, the original cast (except Adam Pascal -- where were you, Adam Pascal? What could have been more important than this?). Everyone crying and laughing and singing and embracing and remembering, forget about it, it was too much, the tears poured like rain. Rent, I thought I was all cried out over you. But I was wrong.

Once again I have found myself engaging in last minute triathlon registration ridiculousness. A few days ago, I signed up for one that is tomorrow. The distances aren't terribly long, so I think I'll be okay, though I am a bit apprehensive about the biking part since the farthest I've ever gone in my life was seven miles. I'm just going to take it slow, try not to fall off or crash, and try to enjoy myself. I'm viewing it as a chance to road trip with a friend and as good practice for the one in August. I know myself, and I know my anxiety over that one will be greatly lessened over the summer by having this one under my belt.

This morning I went to the farmer's market and came away with fresh eggs, cucumbers, strawberries, bell peppers, yellow squash, and carrots. I feel really good about this. The dogs also approve.

Race report

The alarm blasted me awake at 5 a.m. sharp and I groaned and flung myself out of bed, surly and cursing the day I agreed to do this. I ate a whole wheat English muffin toasted with some all-natural peanut butter. I put on my swimsuit and grabbed my goggles and swim cap and stumbled out the door.

I arrived at 5:45 and a large bald man drew my team number on my arms and legs with a big black permanent marker. I picked up my chip and attached it via velcro to my ankle. I squinted in the darkness, trying to spot my friends, but there was no sight of them. I stepped into the brightness of the indoor pool where I had been swimming a grand total of three times in the past two weeks to "train" for this event. There was nary a soul in there yet but a young guy in a black and white referee outfit. "Good morning!" he chirped cheerfully. I went to the bathroom and took a few deep breaths. A few swimmers were getting in the pool to start warming up when I came out.

I headed back outside, and it was still dark but getting a little lighter, and I spotted my friends arriving. They went to set up their bikes. The rest of the pre-race period is kind of a blur. The sun came up. The crowd got bigger. The lines got longer. I noticed that most of the women had on biking shorts and I was seized by a panicky moment of self consciousness that I would be one of the few women to be swimming without them. I am more self conscious about my bottom half in a swimsuit than I am about any other part of my body, and I rarely, if ever, expose it to the public. I tried to ignore that panic.

I put my swim cap on and we lined up, self-seeding ourselves based on how long we thought it would take us to swim 350 meters. Since I am not the world's most confident athlete and hadn't been timing my practice swims, I put myself with the 10-minute swimmers, farther back than I should have, it turns out. We huddled shoulder to shoulder and back to back and bottom to bottom alongside the pool, waiting and waiting and waiting to go in. The minutes crawled by. I kept picking my knees up to keep the blood flowing as we stood there on the damp tile, willing myself to stop thinking "foot fungus, foot fungus" over and over again. My pink swim cap was so tight I could feel my brain throbbing through my forehead and I couldn't really hear anything around me and I had to rip it off for a few minutes. Finally it was our turn and I learned quickly that I should have put myself farther up in the line because I kept having to swim around people. Not that I'm super fast by any stretch of the imagination, I was just faster than the people who happened to be in front of me. The most maddening turn of events of the entire day was realizing that a lot of people were actually swimming on the left, not just passing on the left, so if I needed to pass the swimmer in front of me, I was blocked by the left-sided swimmer and essentially stuck because the space between them was too narrow to swim through. I tried to be zen about this and remind myself I wasn't there to set any records and for more of the race than not, I could just swim. The traffic jams were a drag because they took me out of the moment and out of the zone, if you will, but I had to let it go.

By the time I got to the end, my goggles were totally clouded over and luckily two strong guys grabbed me by the arms and pulled me out. I said, "Thanks, I can't see!" They were friendly and then I pulled off my goggles and took off running out of the building in bare feet wearing nothing but my swimsuit and my swimcap. I ran through a crowd of people cheering me on as I hauled ass to the transition area through the grass. I felt like a complete moron, naked and exposed and bouncing and crazy, but just wanted to get there as fast as I could for my teammate, who was waiting by her bike. I still cannot believe I did this but it was part of the deal, and luckily the distance between the pool and the bikes was fairly short.

I wasn't sure what to do with myself after that since my part of the race was over, so I threw on shorts and my race shirt over my soaking wet suit and exited on foot out the bike exit with a couple of other swimmers and hoofed the two miles of the running route in my Tevas. I never thought to bring running shoes. Luckily these Tevas are comfortable and well broken in. I felt silly walking in sandals while the runners who finished the biking portion caught up with us and zoomed past us, but I wanted to walk so I could wait for my teammate near the finish line. She showed up eventually and we ran the last 100 yards or so together and got our medals at the same time. We slapped her little boys' hands on the way in. It was all very celebratory and fun. The bananas, the oranges, the clapping, the cheering. I was proud of myself and of my friends.

I came home and showered and collapsed on the couch for a few hours. Soon it was time to be fetched for an afternoon festival with M. and her girls. We had a good time, enjoying Italian ices and face painting before it started raining buckets. With no other choice but to set off in the rain for the car where we'd left the umbrella, M. carried her 2-year-old toddler in a baby backpack, and I carried the 5-year-old on my back so she could bury her face in my shoulder and use her hair to protect her newly painted dalmatian face from the downpour. Somehow this worked, and her face art remained relatively intact. I have to say that running through the rain with a couple of very game young girls -- the 2-year-old was laughing and saying, "It's RAINING!" -- was more enjoyable than I anticipated. We went out for turkey burgers and fries and had a merry time. Perhaps my favorite moment of this whole excursion was walking ahead of the 5-year-old after we ate as she carried a giant black umbrella to protect her face paint and hearing her sing out in a very Julie Andrews way, "I have confidence in sunshine, I have confidence in raaaaain!" To be around a couple of little girls who have just discovered The Sound of Music in the past few weeks, knowing the magic that will now be with them the rest of their lives, is a pretty remarkable experience. They already know pretty much every word of every song by heart, and the four of us had a rousing singalong, sans the CD, in the car. ("A captain with 7 children, what's so fearsome about that?" piped a tiny but sure accapella voice from the backseat. Exactly! What's so fearsome about that? I might need to adopt that as my new life motto.) It made me really happy.

The whole day, really, was a joyous celebration of women. Elite athletes and cancer survivors and mothers of newborns, young and old and fit and not-so-fit. I can swim, but I couldn't have climbed on a bike and ridden 12 miles. My friend couldn't have swum 350 meters, but she could bike and run and has lost a lot of weight after bearing three sons and is totally embracing fitness and succeeding, and we were a team. More than three hundred women signed up and did this race in some form or fashion, fast or slow or in teams or solo, and I think that is amazing. Then I hung out with three more of my favorite females all afternoon, and we had confidence in sunshine and in rain, and isn't that something.

Swimming, eating, remembering

My first sweet treat since Lent started was a long time coming. I waited until the Thursday after Easter, when I could return to my favorite cafe and enjoy one of their magnificent pastries. I chose a cappuccino and an almond croissant. It was truly heaven in my mouth, and I ate every little bit carefully and slowly and deliberately. I told myself, "Self, see? See what a treat this is? It's so wonderful, and it was worth the wait."

Then the weekend rolled around, along with a limo ride with some friends for a birthday to one of the best restaurants in existence. And lots of wine. And this:

That is a damn fine plate of food in a sauce made with a damn lot of butter. But I didn't care. It was awesome. And I ate it with grilled shrimp over a fried grits cake and crab cakes and shrimp in a bread bowl and more wine. And then some starbursts and tootsie rolls from a candy bowl. And a good time was had by all, and I'd run three miles that morning, and I still felt perfectly in balance on Sunday, if a bit hungover.

Then this happened:

Oops! A friend and I went to see an art exhibit downtown and wandered over to Earth Day, where it seemed the only right things to eat were strawberry snowballs and a giant plate of greasy Chinese food that cost $13. We split this, yes. But still. Not exactly the healthiest lunch on the block. But who cares? It was a festival, and it was fun to park myself on a curb with a stack of napkins and an old friend I hadn't seen forever and eat that hot mess together. And I went on a long walk when I got home. Then I went to my parents' house after going to mass with them and ate tons of my mom's perfect tuna salad and about two pounds of shelled pecans. I'm not sure what possessed me to eat all I did this weekend. Maybe I was just hungry.

(Mass was good if a little strange. Lots of youth group type kids apparently go to this mass, which is swell, and I like the modern music a lot, and the musicians are fantastic, but I need at least one 80s-style Glory and Praise hymn per mass. That's something I had an epiphany about at this service. I like the young, hip tunes, but throw in a "Here I Am, Lord" or "Sing a New Song" every now and then, please, and it would be perfect. My little brother recently announced that "We Are Called" should become the standard recessional hymn for every mass because nothing can top it. I think he might have a point. OMG: the composer of "We Are Called" has a Myspace page. And none of those versions sounds very good, I'm afraid. Anyway, I didn't realize he also wrote "You Are Mine," which is another favorite of mine. Random Catholic music tangent: one of my co-workers and I got a little punchy from stress last week and started singing the first lines of Catholic songs we grew up with. It is very strange to think we grew up on opposite ends of the state but grew up singing the same songs in church. "Sing to the Mountains," "Lord of the Dance," "City of God," the list goes on and on.)

My very tenacious friend who might as well go ahead and become my life coach persuaded me to do the swimming leg of a triathlon for a mutual friend who only wants to do the biking and running leg. Fine. I think this event is months off, so why not? My friend said, "Let's go swimming tomorrow night!" Which was tonight. So I said, "Sure! Why not!" I bought some goggles and a swim cap at lunch and we went to a place where I thought we had permission to swim, but we totally didn't. My friend acted like we did, though, so in we went. I hadn't swum actual laps in an actual pool since 2003. We swam 8 lengths in the 50-meter pool and called it a day. I got tuckered out doing freestyle about half-way through (tuckered out = felt I might have heart attack) so I started alternating between that and breast stroke. I seriously could do the latter, I think, for hours at a time. It is so soothing. I threw in one length of backstroke just for good measure. Turns out the triathlon is actually, like, next weekend. Awesome! We'll see how that goes. I'm glad this is an event that can be split into legs, because I think it will be fun to participate, but I don't think I could ride a bike on a road if I couldn't even ride a bike in my friend's class in Hawaii for more than approximately thirty seconds.

I just have to say that I do love swimming. It is strange to think that my brother and sister and I swam every summer, all summer long, every single morning for practice plus meets on Saturdays. I don't remember much about those summers except that I think we'd end up just staying at the pool all day. It's not like this was a super-elite swim team or anything. There were all skill levels, and it was just fun. We all wore red swimsuits. The meets were awesome because we would eat jello straight from the box "for energy." I think my sister and I both did it from ages, like, four or five to twelve, every summer. That boggles my mind! (The little kids and the big kids had separate practices, obviously.) I was never the fastest swimmer, but I did always come out second in breaststroke. Even though it was my best stroke, there was one girl I could never, ever beat.

One time the coach at practice made me swim a lap of butterfly all by myself, making the other kids stand by the pool and watch, because she said my stroke was perfect. I remember that she basically barked at the older kids, "Look at this kid! If she can do it like this, why can't you?!" I was one hundred percent mortified but also one hundred percent proud. I was never a child who was known for athletic prowess, so to have something like that happen to me was astonishing and I have never forgotten it. I remember swimming the butterfly across the pool at that moment and thinking that all of those high school boys were watching me and was it possible the coach was making fun of me or punishing me in some way? But I don't think she would do that. Other major swim team memories: practicing swimming the entire length of the pool without taking a breath, throwing the coach in the pool after the meets, and always, always going to Godfather's pizza after the meets with wet hair.

Anyway, so swimming laps brings back mostly happy childhood memories. I know that cardio with impact is important for joint and bone strength, but I think swimming has to be awesome for you, too. I will try to incorporate it more into my life even if breaking the swim place law made me kind of nervous today. I am just not the criminal type.

Tonight after swimming I made an awesome dinner. Onion, bell pepper, garlic, yellow squash, and celery with fresh rosemary and cayenne pepper mixed with chicken breast and slivered almonds cooked in olive oil and quinoa with a little grated mozzarella cheese on top. It made me feel more in control of myself and was delicious.

I would literally give my right arm for a disc of In Treatment to watch right now. Only three weeks left! I love it so much. Must wait for Netflix, though. This is a busy week of dinner and lunch with friends and a date with Ira Glass. Life is good.